A system leveraging the authentication control plane of a communications network to influence the associated Network Service header (NSH) values on a per subscriber packet basis; thus presenting a subscriber aware service chain header on which influences the processing of virtualized network function (VNF). This system implements vendor specific attributes (VSA) within the authentication provider platform to create an association of subscriber identity which may include MAC address, MAC and IP address as a tuple, circuit identifier string, realm based authentication data, IMSI, in part or in addition to leveraging DHCP Relay information sub options that may be present, which when processed inherit one or multiple vendor specific attributes from the authentication platform. These VSA values, each no greater than 2 bytes define the payload headers the participating subscriber gateway will shim to its layer 2 payload for processing as a Service Chain through one or multiple virtual network functions located elsewhere in the network.